Aesthetic design of textile and printed goods encompasses interior decorating and fashion design. In many cases, experts are engaged by customers to render design and decorating services. This often involves reviewing and comparing many material samples in order to decide on a combination of materials that presents an aesthetically pleasing design for a customer. For example, an interior decorator may be tasked with creating a rug that matches a particular fabric design on an existing couch or draperies. In order to do this, the interior decorator can be faced with a daunting task, as thread is typically stored on a large bobbin and a decorator may need to collect many bobbins in order to compare color and texture for each thread with a fabric swatch. This problem is further compounded when the decorator has to travel to a customer location in order to perform such a comparison. Furthermore, the task of visualizing threads, yarns, and textile fabrics to determine complementary elements and how they blend together can be difficult.
Attempts have been made to lay out and compare material samples, such as thread and fabric, when performing decorating and design services. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,495,054 to Cooper, entitled “Means for Use in the Designing of Woven Fabrics”, and issued Jan. 17, 1950, provides several groups of colored (or thread and fabric covered) blocks that are manipulated into design configurations in order to visualize how the different colors blend together in a proposed design. However, these blocks prove bulky, and the total number of samples capable of being used in a compact and portable system is severely limited.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,743,407 to Williams, entitled “Color Reference System for Decorators”, and issued. Apr. 28, 1998, provides a color reference system for correlating colors to decorating parameters for an area. Color reference cards are used to store color samples. An associated identifier is used to correlate the color sample to the identifier. Decorating parameters are provided on area reference cards for different rooms and locations, such as primary, accent, and accessory color identifiers. For the case where a color sample corresponds to a decorating parameter for a location, the identifier is recorded in association with the decorating parameter. The entire system is portable, and a user can find a color sample for comparison purposes without carrying color palettes with color samples that don't correspond to colors in an area to be decorated by looking at a decorating parameter for an area and using the color identifier to find the color sample on the color reference card. However, a user is not armed with a broad range of color samples. Secondly, the system does not provide a convenient display area for comparing color samples, while retaining the color samples within a defined work area.
Attempts have been made to consolidate material samples, such as thread and fabric, when performing decorating and design services. For example, published U.S. Patent Application No. 2002/0045150 A1 to Mosley, entitled “Method for Organizing Threads”, and published on Apr. 18, 2002, is directed to a method for organizing threads. I-shaped elements are loaded with thread samples, each with a unique color. The elements can be loaded into a storage unit for later use. A color comparison chart is used to compare various colors of threads between compatible color code schemes. However, the storage unit has multiple levels, and is not very compact and portable. Secondly, there is little aid provided when it comes time to visually compare colors of thread, as a comparison chart is used instead of presenting a visual display for performing a comparison.